So you want to specialize?

One of the Intercultural Zone’s faithful readers, Catherine Jan, emailed a few days ago with a specific request:

“Can you offer some advice on how to develop a new area of specialization?  I’d like to dig deeper [into the area of photovoltaics] and find work in this area. But I have no previous experience to refer to.”

That’s a great topic, Catherine, thanks for suggesting it.

Readers are invited to contribute their advice and to suggest other topics for future posts!

1. Choose the new area with care
Commitment

Developing a new area of specialization is a serious commitment. You’ll be investing time and energy for a future ROI. Where are you going to steal that time from? Your work hours (assess how many you can afford to invest)? Or the time you spend with your loved ones (getting their support is important)?

This new expertise has to prove sustainable.

• The subject has to be compelling: Does it speak to me? Do I have a real feeling for it? Will it satisfy my intellect for a long time? Would having to adapt 100 pages in one shot boost my brain or put me to sleep?
• Is the demand for this area of specialization durable, or is it some fly-by-night trendy craze businesses will ignore in a year or two?
• Is this area of specialization is narrow enough that I would provide real added value (and bill accordingly), yet not so restrictive as to make my new skills hard to market?
• What areas do I already specialize in I can leverage to land projects in this new field?

2. Plan
Road map

Make a business plan for this particular area, just as if you were starting a new business.

Figure out what you need to invest in, what that is going to cost, how you are going to fund these investments, over what period of time. The main ticket is your time. And it isn’t free. Develop an early prospect list. The ideal is to speak with some of them to get some of the info needed to conduct your own SWOT analysis. Estimate also what ROI you can reasonably expect within the next year or two.

Are the signals green or are a there a couple of yellow blinking lights?

3. Assemble the basics
Curiosity

Go on a treasure hunt! What’s out there that can help you scope the subject and focus how you are to acquire this special knowledge?

Professional associations and publications, specialized glossaries and dictionaries, upcoming trade shows, recognized specialists, fellow translators, companies and annual reports. What aspects of this new field interest  you most?

What related knowledge might you need? In Catherine’s example – photovoltaics for domestic use – might familiarity with architecture, roofing, and national/local programmes supporting the development of sustainable energies be useful?

Always, READ and QUESTION!

4. Go sniff around
Build relationships

Sniffing around is fun and important. Attending trade shows, demos, playing mystery customer and so on are great ways to discover the culture and the environment of the field you seek to become involved with. Who are the players? What are they like? What savoir-faire and savoir-être did they need to become successful? What issues affecting their business keep them up at night?

Developing a new specialization also means creating a new client base, individuals and companies with whom you are going to build relationships. To do so, it is important to speak their language, understand their world and default to curiosity and empathy to connect successfully with them as a professional and as an individual.

5. Find training opportunities
Reach out

Depending on your targeted specialization, there may or may not be a large choice of courses you can sign up for (translation-specific or otherwise). If it’s a desert out there, you’ll just have to be more creative.

A few suggestions:

• Go where it happens: get a guided tour of a factory or plant, research lab, and so on. You know where what you are aiming for happens.
• Find specialized colleagues for insider advice, mentoring, resources that didn’t hit your radar yet.
• Find barter opportunities: by now, you’ll have assembled a list of prospects and contacts. Some may be willing to swap, say, your helping them spruce up their language skills in exchange for them helping you understand some challenging aspect of your new field, reviewing a home-grown glossary, or allowing you to be an observer for a few days of the company’s activities.

6. Getting those first projects
Generosity and diligence

You will have noticed (yes??), there is a build up here. You have started to develop relationships with individuals in your targeted domain. You’ve demonstrated your commitment, interest, resourcefulness, openness and skill over time. And they have provided valuable help along the way.  These individuals should be the first you target, with modesty. Why?

- They know you. Showing up is half the battle!
- They have already invested in you. Most would be willing to do so again and want to see an ROI.
- They know you are not a top expert yet. They expect you will ask questions and have doubts, and they are more likely to provide that valuable feedback than clients who have not been privy to your learning process. They recognize the added value you ARE in a position to offer them, whether it be in the quality of your writing skills or your proficiency in related domains (for example, translating a legal contract for a photovoltaic start-up).

Let’s hear some success stories from colleagues!

Some time last year, a client – we’ll name him Monsieur M. to protect his good name – asked me to translate a press release from French into US English.  This communiqué announced a major event for his young company and was written in a very ‘markety’, trendy and catchy style.

As is often the case, a close-to-the-source-text translation would fall flat. Also, and readers, you know this: a press release for the US market is structured quite differently from a French communiqué.

So I revamped the document to make it fit-for-purpose. Adapted the style and mode of communication (French is a high context language and culture, American a low context one). Rreplaced French popular culture references with American ones. Polished up the text and sent it off to Monsieur M.

An hour later, the phone rings.

Monsieur M.: Patricia, you’ve sent me the wrong file. This is not the translation I asked for.

Me: Pardon? [panic attack sets in] Hang on; let me look into this …. [Double-check sent email and attached file]. Si, si! It’s the right file [provide file name], are you sure you opened the right document?

Monsieur M.: I am sure you sent me the wrong file. My communiqué had 4 paragraphs and 24 lines. This file has 5 paragraphs, but only 17 lines. And everyone knows a good translation respects the source file’s layout and appearance. This thing does not look anything like my communiqué.

As you master increasingly difficult positions, proper breathing becomes automatic: you are no longer consciously engaged in leading your body’s inspiration-expiration dance.

Writing workshop

Ros Schwartz and Chris Durban’s writing workshop for translators, Style Matters I, held in Paris February 5^th, was an immersion in writing translations for publication.

It offered valuable advice and techniques for those wishing to hone their craft and invited a return to consciousness for those used to leveraging their writing skills to serve their clients’ interests.

Writers and translators rely on proficiency of language to craft high impact texts. They also use their senses and their instinct, just as painters and musicians do to give life to colors and notes. With experience, techniques learned and practiced merge with creative intuition, words flowing together in an artful dance as if graced with a life of their own.

Conscious choreography

Working in a group spurs conscious engagement.

Why did we choose a word rather than another? What awkwardness in this turn of phrase tickled your pen to change it? What effect do you think this change has on the balance of the text or on the message it is to carry? What solutions did colleagues find to transform gibberish into music?

Chris asked me whether I’d found the course useful.

The answer is a resounding yes, for several reasons. It spurred a return to the consciousness of doing, and the satisfaction and enrichment this brings. Watching how colleagues approach a text and hearing the solutions proposed can boost your own creativity. And developing relationships with others who work in similar areas broadens opportunities, as a team, to take on complex projects for demanding clients.

And I learned that, in UK English, an m-dash is an n-dash and it takes a space before and after it.

So, when is Style II coming to town?

The client is not always right. Sometimes the end client commits translation roadkill by:

1. Starting work on a bilingual publication without putting its translation team in place.

2. Contacting its translation team with a stated volume and deadline, but with only half the texts written and no clear date when the rest of the files will be available.

3. Shortening the deadline by half once the translation is already under way (and the rest of the source texts still unavailable).

4. Scurrying about to find extra translators to handle the volume in the reduced amount of time.

5. Allowing no time for review and harmonization of all the texts translated by a slew of last-minute recruits.

This is just what happened to a wonderful corporate book on which a respected colleague had asked me to work with him. We are finishing the sections we had started and calling it quits.

We work hard and long for projects we can be proud of. We won’t even consider whipping through an entire book in under a week. “We don’t do MT”.

Disappointing? Of course. But the big looser is the end client. They’ve tossed a nice chunk of change right out the window and won’t have much to show for it.

Savvy clients invest. They do the exact opposite of each point above because they want their corporate books to shine in all languages.

As I work my way through 30 Days to Better Business Writing, Matthew Stibbe’s recently published e-book for wordsmiths, several chapters swirl in my head, calling for a client-oriented version.

Maybe even client-oriented versions in other languages. Take Day 7, “Analyse bad writing”, and Day 16, “Manage your writing”, for example.

Selling copywriting services to companies that recognize the benefits of good copy is a relative cakewalk. Selling to those that are the most in need of good writers is often an uphill battle. The are many reasons for mind-deadening copy, but two stand out:

• A lack of awareness of how ineffective the company’s written communications really are (and how they got that way)
• A not infrequent epidermic reaction by the text’s author to suggestions for improvement (often senior in-house staff)

The challenge is compounded when striving to produce compelling copy in another language from insipid source text. If Churchill had lived in the Internet age and perused multilingual corporate websites, I doubt he could have claimed “eating words has never given me indigestion.”

Tweaking some of 30 Days’ chapters to resonate with business writing buyers might just offer the gentle push some companies need to look at their copy more objectively. It would be the perfect companion to Chris Durban’s often cited guide to buying translations, Translation: Getting it Right.

A good team is more important to a successful business than products or profits, according to Lee Iacocca. Including good writers on your corporate team is an essential investment. “You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere,” he quipped.

In any language.

Where others collect coins, stamps, or eggcups, I collect storage hardware: 3 1/2 inch diskettes, SuperDisks, Zip disks, CD-Roms, external hard drives, flash drives, smart cards, USB keys, and the computers whose data they preserved.

A bit excessive? Probably. The memory of a serious scolding when I was a child remains. Told to go clean up my room, I did just that, and pitched a bunch of family letters my eight year-old’s logic considered useless to keep. The rule of thumb for data has become “better safe than sorry.”

I’ve tried to convey that fear to my husband. Largely unsuccessfully. Where I keep multiple copies of all my data, only recently did he heed the call to back-up his computer on an external hard drive. He didn’t see the point of repeating this time-consuming process twice.

Last week, his computer was infected with a virus. While he was doing a clean reinstall, the  external HDD fell. It’s toast. He lost a magnificent slide collection representing decades of work in the northern Alps. We hope data recovery experts will be able to salvage it.

My multiple copies and daily back-up routines don’t seem as loony now. If one gizmo breaks down, I don’t waste time running to the data hospital and I know my clients’ documents are safe. Last year, a client phoned, panicked: the company’s IT system had been infected and my client had lost a year’s worth of documents we had worked on together. Within an hour, I sent my client a zip file with all the source documents, translations, and the in-house glossary we had developed to provide that organization with reliable terminology standards.

Andrew Bell over at the Watercooler has chosen Sustainability in Translation as the theme for his October book contest. Preserving data integrity is one of the keys to providing value and service to clients (even years after a job is done), working both efficiently and effectively, building on your knowledge and skills.

If you are a back-up junkie? Tell us how that has served your business and your clients’ needs!

30.11.09
Une bourde de 530 000 € !

Le numéro 995 de Courrier International évoque le coûteux raté de la campagne de pub’ visant à promouvoir la Lettonie auprès de touristes anglo-saxons.

“Riga city: easy to go, hard to live”

Pas franchement un slogan capable de séduire ! Vous l’aurez compris, l’affiche devait dire hard to leave.

Coût de la campagne ratée? 530 000 €, hors dégâts collatéraux.

Encore un exemple, sûrement, d’un donneur d’ordre souhaitant faire des économies de bouts de chandelle sur son budget traduction et révision !

16.09.09
Deux photos prises sur le vif Avenue Berthelot, à Lyon.

Pauvre Jaurès, s'il avait su...

Spécialité lyonnaise?

10.09.09
Transpositions can curtail your appetite
The Group Bertrand is one of leading independent restaurant groups in France, with a turnover of €112 M in 2008.

It’s branding signature in French is “Innover dans la restauration”. Trendy architecture, concept restaurants, and creative associations of herbs and spices come to mind.

Translated Transposed into English, the tag becomes insipid gobbledygook: “Innovate in the restauration”.
Does that whet your taste buds?

02.09.09

http://www.nice.aeroport.fr/?l=2

“New Exposure at the Airport Pittoresque”

That should be a revealing exhibit! You have until the end of October to catch it.

29.08.09

www.corporate.airfrance.com

Bellevue*, anyone?

*psychiatric hospital in New York City.

De temps à autre, un projet permet de conjuguer expertise professionnelle (RSE, développement durable, communication d’entreprise) et engagements personnels (protection animale et protection de l’environnement).

Là, c’est le bonheur assuré.

C’est le cas de TAAC, The Animal Affinity Club, une association à vocation internationale dont je suis le développement depuis l’idée initiale il y a bon nombre d’années déjà et qui a enfin vu le jour en 2008.

TAAC propose aux entreprises et entrepreneurs de renforcer et valoriser leur engagement sociétal grâce à des partenariats solidaires innovants et à une thématique d’avenir : le lien Homme-Animal.

Autrement dit, TAAC aide à orienter le mécénat d’entreprise vers le soutien d’associations de terrain qui œuvrent pour le respect de la nature et la promotion du lien homme-animal sans lesquels la survie de l’espèce humaine, à terme, est à risque.

Pour répondre à son positionnement résolument haut de gamme orienté grands comptes et CSP+ et promouvoir son internationalisation, TAAC a entrepris la refonte de son site Internet dont la première partie vient d’être mise en ligne.

merci à www.wordle.net

Contrairement à la nouvelle taxe carbone annoncée cette semaine dont la logique est punitive, l’innovante approche construite par TAAC est incitative et récompense toutes les parties prenantes.

Ces alliances répondent aux impératifs de chaque partenaire. Les entreprises et entrepreneurs mécènes concrétisent leur démarche RSE et se voient proposer des opportunités d’actions de communication et d’accompagnement en communication stratégique pendant que les associations de terrain accèdent plus facilement au financement dont elles ont besoin tout en bénéficiant de mécénat de compétences pour soutenir leur professionnalisation.

TAAC est une belle pierre dans l’effort de se sortir de ce cercle infernal si bien décrit par Levi-Strauss :

Tant que l’homme continuera à être le destructeur impitoyable des êtres animés des plans inférieurs, il ne connaîtra ni la santé, ni la paix. On a commencé par couper l’homme de la nature et par le constituer en règne souverain. Jamais mieux qu’au terme des quatre derniers siècles de son histoire, l’homme occidental ne put-il comprendre qu’en s’arrogeant le droit de séparer radicalement l’humanité de l’animalité, en accordant à l’une tout ce qu’il retirait à l’autre, il ouvrait un cycle maudit, et que la même frontière, constamment reculée, servirait à écarter des hommes d’autres hommes [...] — Claude LEVI-STRAUSS, Anthropologie structurale

Et vous ? Quels sont les projets qui vous permettent de conjuguer expertise professionnelle et engagements personnels? Racontez-nous ! Faites profiter les actions que vous soutenez, à titre personnel et/ou professionnel, d’un petit coup de pub’ !

No, I am not referring to precise terminology used by a specific group of people and only occasionally understood by those outside the group. If, for example, you are writing or translating a medical text for an audience of specialists, you should be writing perorbital hæmatoma and not the plain English ‘black eye’ or the French layman’s ‘œil au beurre noir’.

I am talking about my pet peeve (or one of them, rather), the use of jargon that has become as prevalent as driver incivility.

The French have a more imaginative way of calling it: langue de bois or wooden tongue, that is to say the ability to expound at length, striving to sound intellectual/intelligent/in the know (pick one) without having to provide any real content. Listen to public officials’ speeches or the talking heads on news programs and you’ll see what I mean.

Often, the author of a text is unaware of its jargon density ratio.

As a translator, what do you do when your jargon-meter goes into the red zone? Do you remain faithful to the source text or do you strive to improve it? Savvy clients will want copy best suited to their target audience and objectives. Open-minded clients might even revise their source text for clarity or ask you to do so.

Jargonspeak can be contagious. Like a behavioral tick, you may not always be 100% aware jargon has slipped into your own writing. And when on a tight deadline, chances are you’ll focus your final review on spelling, grammar, and typography rather than on clarity of style (you’ve already spent a lot of time on that, right?)

Here are some free tools that can help you get rid of the last bit of drivel in your copy.

• Bullfighter, software originally developed by Deloitte that works as a plug-in in MS Word and PowerPoint. Its “Bull Composite Index” calculates your text’s jargon density (hint: you want as low a score as possible). BullFighter works best with Office 2003 and XP. I have two computers with Office 2000 and XP Pro: BullFighter works on one, but not the other. Why remains a mystery…
• DrivelDefense, a Java-based application that helps you check if your text is written in plain English. It analyzes your sentences and suggests other words if it suspects you’ve let jargon slip in. Because this application is Web-based, there are no compatibility issues. The Plain English Campaign’s Web site is full of freebies, including Plain English magazine, style guides, and specialized glossaries. They also run the Golden Bull Awards in honor of the year’s best examples of gobbledygook. Click here for the 2008 Golden Bull winners.
• You can check your terminology against the MBA Jargon Index and contribute your own definitions. Better yet, take a break and read through the Index: laughter oxygenates the brain.
• If you run business English writing workshops, you might like to try the Buzzword Bingo game.

Of course, none of these solve the question “How or if to translate jargon” and I plan to chat with my client tomorrow about his French jargon-infested piece. Maybe I should have written a post called What happens when a management consultant writes marketing copy for a non-profit? But these tools may help me catch whatever drivel words managed to disguise themselves as acceptable vocabulary.

This can make it difficult for them to appreciate the level of service you are providing or to understand why a 24 hour turnaround time for 3,000 words for publication is a dangerous thought. Many clients or prospects appreciate it when a translator takes the time to explain the care that goes into meeting (exceeding?) their expectations.

This post outlines most of the steps involved in this sample 3,000 words for publication assignment where style is paramount and the time allotted to each.

1. Receive client brief and document; review document: 15 mns
2. Seek colleague who will review your translation and agree on fee: 30 mns (with luck)
3. Prepare and send quote to client; if new client,
send along your general terms for signature : 15 mns
4. (sometimes) Respond to client questions by phone or email : ?
5. Wait for signed purchase order and terms : ?
6. With PO in hand, set up client project and administrative folders: 5 mns
7. Review document more closely; spot terminology research and questions to client: 60 mns
8. Translate (terminology research time is included): 600 mns
9. Write email to client with all questions and suggestions to clarify the source text : 30 mns
10. Review client response, make changes if any to the source text and review translation: 60 mns
11. Spell check and proofread on screen (comparing with source text): 180 mns
12. Print translation and review for style (often aloud): 240 mns
13. Send translation and source text to colleague: 5 mns
14. Colleague conducts final review: 240 mns
15. Review colleague’s revisions : 60 mns
16. Prepare invoice for client: 15 mns
17. Send translation and invoice to client: 5 mns
18. Respond to client comments and questions

SUBTOTAL: 1560 mns (26 hours)
***
19. After page layout, final review before production : 360 mns
20. Receive invoice from colleague and issue payment : 15 mns
21. Receive payment from client
TOTAL: 1935 mns (32.25 hours)

Even if some translators can work at higher speeds, please note this scenario does not even include buffer time in case of computer or Internet problems, lack of response from the client to critical questions, or any of the pitfalls professionals can face during a project.

The rule of thumb in the industry for *for publication work* (I’ve heard this from several professionals whose opinion I respect) is 1,500 to 1,800 words a day.

It fits: this sample assignment is a two day job.

If the client insists on having it done in one day, it is the client’s responsibility to state clearly which quality assurance steps should be ignored, and the translator’s responsibility to consign those choices in the purchase order for the client’s signature. The same suggestions apply should the client’s objective be to reduce costs rather than time.

Quick, good, cheap: you can only have two out of the three.